


Tradition

by purglepurglepurgle



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Angst, Gen, a glimpse of Barret, just me being depressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:15:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22245466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purglepurglepurgle/pseuds/purglepurglepurgle
Summary: Kalm. Almost a year after meteor. Tseng raps on the letterbox, to see Elmyra for the first time in some months.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough & Marlene Wallace, Aerith Gainsborough & Tseng, Elmyra Gainsborough & Tseng, Marlene Wallace & Tseng
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	Tradition

**Author's Note:**

> Ties in with 'Procrastination', though that one's more cheerful.

Kalm. Almost a year after meteor. Tseng raps on the letterbox, to see Elmyra for the first time in some months.

A small figure answers the door, a girl, waist-height, with brown hair, and his heart _leaps_ and he thinks ' _oh, hello again!_ ' before he realises what he's seeing. It's gun-arm's kid. Tseng can never remember the name, and he doesn't care.

"Hello," says Tseng to the strange child, eyes fixed on a point above her shoulder. "Is Elmyra here?"

*

Tseng sits in the kitchen, waiting for Elmyra to return from her shift. Through the window, he can see a small back garden. Bare soil. The room is silent except for the tick of the clock, and the scratch of the girl's crayon as she scribbles on some paper.

"What are you drawing?" he asks, at last. From where he's sitting, it looks like some kind of pink and yellow tumbleweed, but he has enough experience to know that he's a bad guesser.

"Princess," the girl mumbles into the table, avoiding his eyes. He feels a flicker of annoyance. Why can't this girl _talk_?

After a few minutes, he asks, "What's the yellow bit?"

"Flowers," mumbles the girl. "Flower princess."

Tseng shudders. "How twee." He can see the red crayon in the pot, worn down further than all the others.

_"This is the dragon and it's red cuz it ate all the other dragons and it's their blood so now it's the PRINCESS DRAGON and it's gonna eat everyone and then it's gonna go to the Shinra tower and it's gonna smash it down and eat president shinra and he's over here and he's screaming 'NO! MY TOWER!' but nobody hears him, just more dragons, so they destroy his tower extra just to teach him a lesson and then they all eat him together and one of them has shark teeth and then they have a sit down with a nice cup of tea. But then someone came with an axe. But the princess dragon has a shotgun!"_

_"Wait, can't she just breathe fire?"_

_"No! It's not allowed!"_

Tseng looks down at the woodgrain. It's the same table Elmyra had in Sector 5. He can tell because, at the edge, there's a tiny bitemark.

"So, your _flower princess_ ," says Tseng, unable to keep the disdain out of his voice as he tries to give the girl another chance. "Can she fight? If she's powerful, she must attract assassins. What does she do if someone tries to kill her?"

But to his disgust, the girl starts crying.

*

When Elmyra returns, she's with gun-arm himself. Wearing a stupid showy ribbon on his bicep. He glares at Tseng, stomps across to the girl and hulks over her, protective (she's stopped crying by now, at least).

"Marlene! You jes' ignore the bad man, papa's here." He lifts her onto his shoulder and carries her out of the room, and soon Tseng can hear them laughing at something inane. Tseng shuts the door so he doesn't have to listen.

Several minutes pass.

Elmyra puts her groceries away. Eventually, she says, "I didn't know if I'd be seeing you today."

"I wasn't sure," admits Tseng. "I thought not visiting would be worse."

Elmyra gives a small shrug, taking too long to put the sugar in the cupboard. He doesn't say anything.

A few minutes later, when Elmyra is putting the milk away, she takes a breath. "She wouldn't half laugh at us," she says, into the fridge. "Meeting up like this."

Tseng closes his eyes. "Yes, she'd ask if we were going to do it every year."

"Are we?" says Elmyra, turning to look at him.

"I hope not," says Tseng. "Awkward enough as it is. But..."

Elmyra closes the fridge. She sighs. "I didn't get anything in."

"That would be a bit much," agrees Tseng.

They sit down at the table.

"Twenty four..." says Elmyra, at last. "That can't be right."

"Yes," says Tseng. "Wasn't she seven last week?"

They stare out of the window, at the empty garden.


End file.
